fireplace

​Fire places have become a rare part of the home these days. Most of the reason has been because of the advent of technologies such as the electric heater and the general consensus of global warming. For many environmentalists, they believe that anything that emits lots of carbon dioxide is a danger to the environment. This has led to the demise of the fireplace.

Despite that, fire places are a device that can make you connect with nature. Fire places also provide the opportunity for bonding with family members etc. They are a great tool and one should think about installing one.

What we will talk about on this page is how various types of fire places are constructed. We will go through brick/mortar, stone and concrete fireplaces. All this should make you more informed and get you interested in getting a fireplace for your backyard or patio, or wherever, when you are hosting friends and family over.

brick fireplaces

​Constructing a fire place is very much like constructing a brick wall. The only difference is that you are basically constructing a box made of bricks. This requires bricklaying skills because you are putting bricks onto of one another.

To construct a brick fire place, you need to lay the foundation, just like you would with building a brick wall. Then you will construct the walls of the fire place using mortars and cement mix, just like you would with the brick wall. Then the chimney and finishing touches are made to the brick fireplace before you are finished.

natural stone fireplaces

​The name suggests what it is – a fire place made out of natural stone.

One of the main things about building a fireplace out of natural stone is that you are using two main types of rock to create the face of the fireplace – mountain rock and river rock. As the names suggest, these rocks can come from rivers and mountains.

You can tell the difference between the two rocks is by looking at the edges. River rocks tend to be smaller, and smooth around the edges. Mountain rocks are jagged around the edges and has a rough surface.

Whichever you choose for your fireplace is up to you. However, we recommend that you also use fire brick because you can get more heat out of your fire place into the outdoor area on those cold nights. Also they offer protection from overheating and gives your fireplace a visual appeal.

concrete fireplaces

If you want more ways of constructing your fireplace, you should definitely consider constructing a concrete fireplace.

Here’s why – you have more choices. You can choose to create a form to create your concrete structure. Once that form has been made and your concrete mixture poured in, you can stamp the concrete to create patterns on the outside of the concrete fireplace. That way, your fireplace will stand out among the many.

What’s more, you can color the concrete using some color pigment. You can change the grey color of concrete into a red-brown color or even yellow. It is all up to you because using concrete for your fire place gives you that advantage.

Or you can get concrete blocks and use them to construct your fireplace. It is very similar to building a brick fireplace, but the only difference is that you are using concrete blocks. These concrete blocks tend to be cheaper than using bricks so the cost factor is important here.

What matters here though is that when you construct your concrete fireplace, you have choices here. How you construct, the color and the patterns are all up to you.